Let's be honest

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Yes, quite so. Like others I'm thrilled with Photo and Designer and use Designer and Pages for print output. My concern is that while I can produce a lovely electronic-image-of-a-book in Publisher I can't print it which defeats the object. As I have to do manual imposition, that's easier in Designer than Publisher, especially when I sometime use wacky folds - Publisher's never going to cope with that. Patently users producing telephone directories, business cards, novels and brochures have different needs!

I wish my chums in Nottingham all the very best with this (you've never heard a Derby person say that before) and when it can print books without needing separate imposition I'll be there (as will Rahel no doubt).

I'm not complaining; merely highlighting that it doesn't do book imposition (and could with twenty lines of code). Yet. And I understand that users of the other software don't think it works terribly well either! And finally I accept that Serif need to put resource into making this bombproof for the majority of use cases, not me. So happy to wait.

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I remember indesign 1 and 1.5. as also adobe pagemaker early stages. (younger) folks believe me: this beta is already a propper tool!

InDy 1 was unusable. I recommended designer school to get it without trying it first and boy was I embarrassed. V 1.5 was barely usable (much of the problem was that InDy demanded a powerful machine to run smoothtly..) V 2 was wonderful.

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Most people who design long-form documents and other copy-heavy content for a living do not "word process" inside the layout application. They write the long blocks of copy in a Word Processor (or someone else is writing it and handing the copy off) and then import them into the layout flow and work with the text from there to properly style it, etc.

For short-form documents (a few paragraphs to maybe 1 page worth) I don't see many limitations here at all in terms of creating the text right in Publisher. All font, spacing, alignment, column, baseline and other core controls needed to create, style, and flow text are more or less front and center and work in the standard ways. And one of the more challenging aspects of any layout program — text wrap capabilities — are shaping up to be pretty fantastic and far beyond anything I've seen in InDesign for example. Things are not perfect, but anyone with a decent amount of design training and experience should be able to use this app (today) to create sharp-looking documents.

The only obvious thing that's missing in terms of copy flow is .doc / .docx import but there are ways around that for now (but they do need to fix that ASAP). It's a beta so I would expect the import/export abilities will be one of the weak spots initially, and there are more modal dialogs than I'm used to in InDesign but overall this is a capable layout application for a 1.x product.

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@ Fixx No, not just that. It is the ability to export to EPUB or other book formats.

At present, I can export a book from Pages (or similar) as a PDF, import it easily into Publisher, do whatever I want with it, then I can only export it as a PDF, not as an ebook of any type. The simple question is why? It is an obvious requirement.

I'm sorry you are disappointed. We're aware we have a great deal to do to address various constituencies. For this initial release we decided to coast on the export formats that Designer already had, especially PDF, and instead focus on other elements of DTP. This is because we felt that PDF was enough for at least some people to get some useful work done. Although the Affinity range is very successful, it doesn't make economic sense for us to keep developing Publisher in secret until it can be all things to all people. Instead we wanted to get it to the point where at least a few users would pay us for it, and then release it so they could do so. This means the first release probably won't satisfy three-quarters of the people who downloaded the beta. However, we do intend to continue developing it over the next many years. We are in it for the long haul - we developed the Plus range for over 25 years. Every new release will handle more use-cases, bring in another constituency of users and hopefully make us more money. It's going to be an exciting journey. Meanwhile I can only ask that you don't write us off altogether now, and instead check back in a year, or two years, or five years, and see whether we handle your requirements then.

PS. I probably should add that we really appreciate all the feedback we're getting, positive and negative. It's fantastic to see how much interest our new product has garnered. It's much better than being ignored!

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I'm certainly not writing you off and will buy a licence as an act of faith. There's a fine line between making a noise about what we're needing to recommend Publisher as highly as the other two apps and sounding critical. I suppose part of the problem is we're sitting here comparing the very fine 1.6 apps with a 0.9 version that's numbered 1.7. No doubt if you had done Publisher first we'd be sitting here moaning about the early versions of Designer. Comments notwithstanding the overall impression is "Here's a pretty solid start", as if Henry Ford had started with the Escort and we're moaning about the lack of satnav.

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I haven't had the time to play with it yet, but I did notice Publisher has a 'book' feature, plus sections, etc. I too have a job I work every year where the sections are imperative to keeping everything organized before compiling the final book. I'll try to find some time over the weekend to set up a dummy file and see how it works. But things like Index and Table of Contents already appear to be part of Publisher! :-)

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"Beta software is generally considered "complete" by the developer but still not ready for general use due to a lack of testing in the wild."

thanks, exactly that.

On 9/1/2018 at 11:51 AM, mac_heibu said:

Yes, absolutely! Especially in a beta(!) of version 1(!!)

Just dream on!

And believe me: I am working in print industries for decades, and all, you think is absolutely necessary in a pre version one release was possible times ago without any special command/feature within an application. It simply requires a certain amount of work and creativity.

Understand me correctly: I don’t say, these feaures are unnecessary. But I say, expecting them in a version one of a new publisher is unworldly. And saying, it is not possible to use the app („… I can’t print a single thing!“) is …

And even if we consider that this beta has not all the tools yet, I think is important to let know the developers what is important, necessary for our workflow. If I want a cheap (free) DTP I can just download Scribus. The software has to be used as a tool and should create the least amount of hurdles. Needing workarounds to be able to print out a simple photo book shouldn't be the case.

I am not voicing my concerns to discredit the software, I am writing my needs to help the developers make Publisher a superior product. As is, I can't justify the purchase. For the time I would spend on working around a lacking bleed option or footnotes I can invest in InDesign. Is simple as that.

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"Beta software is generally considered "complete" by the developer but still not ready for general use due to a lack of testing in the wild."

In the case of Publisher 1.7, this beta isn't quite feature complete because a few smallish things weren't ready in time. We couldn't delay going public, because someone announced the date during the Designer iPad launch. The bleed preview is an example of that; it should be in the next beta later this week. We may also pick up some extra features from Designer 1.7 and Photo 1.7, which are both still under development and which should be released at about the same time as Publisher 1.7. (We need to keep them in sync because they can open each other's files.)

The bigger issue is that 1.7 isn't the end of the line, even when it is released as a paid-for product. For comparison, we first released Affinity Designer in 2014, as 1.0, and it has had new features added to it every year since. Hence its version is now 1.6. And all those updates were free, for people who had bought a previous version. In the same way, features which will be missing from Publisher 1.7 even when it comes out of beta, will be added in free version updates over time. So in that sense the product isn't "complete" and won't be until we start version 2.0.

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today I have redone a whole booklet in publisher and despite the warning, not to use it for client projects yet, I have risked it. end of the week I will get it to a "real" printer. that went A) faster than in "affinity designer", B) after only 3 days of testing (!!!!) of a "new" software without any questions and work arounds and C) without ANY craashes! – all the complains make me speechless. I cannot address that enough. we should all stop compare this software to quark, indesign or pages (this one makes especially laugh). as those 3 tools can tell you by their names, all of those are simply different. all of them will work different. all of them will do things maybe a different way. – I remember the critique about the ways indesign worked in comparison with quark. now even xpress became really good with the update in may 2018, still indesign is the "go to" tool in dtp. – thank god nobody compares publisher with freehand.

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In the case of Publisher 1.7, this beta isn't quite feature complete because a few smallish things weren't ready in time. We couldn't delay going public, because someone announced the date during the Designer iPad launch. The bleed preview is an example of that; it should be in the next beta later this week. We may also pick up some extra features from Designer 1.7 and Photo 1.7, which are both still under development and which should be released at about the same time as Publisher 1.7. (We need to keep them in sync because they can open each other's files.)

The bigger issue is that 1.7 isn't the end of the line, even when it is released as a paid-for product. For comparison, we first released Affinity Designer in 2014, as 1.0, and it has had new features added to it every year since. Hence its version is now 1.6. And all those updates were free, for people who had bought a previous version. In the same way, features which will be missing from Publisher 1.7 even when it comes out of beta, will be added in free version updates over time. So in that sense the product isn't "complete" and won't be until we start version 2.0.

Quote

"Beta software is generally considered "complete" by the developer but still not ready for general use due to a lack of testing in the wild."

Yes, but when you release version 1.7 this year, it is no longer a beta version. It is the release version referred to as "complete" in the quoted text. Nothing is ever complete so you know they quote was about version 1.7 alone. It is all we have for a long -time until version 2.0. And when version 2.0 reaches the beta stage, people here will again say "No criticism, don't you know what a beta version is?".

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I remember indesign 1 and 1.5. as also adobe pagemaker early stages. (younger) folks believe me: this beta is already a propper tool!

Quite right. We got our first mac back in 87 or 88. My father had bought it with Pagemaker and Aldus Freehand as DTP software. Coming from photo typesetting, it was revolutionary back in those days but I think if I were to go back to that equipment and software I'd slip into a major depression in no time. I've seen the evolution of hardware, monitors and software. After pagemaker, Xpress became the new standard (personally I was never a big fan), then came indesign and it became the new standard. I' ve tried some alternatives like the new Xpress and even the open source Scribus but I still think Indesign is the best DTP software.

however: I think Affinity is seriously on the right track towards becoming the new standard, not only because of its affordability but because it seems they understand the needs of creative professionals these days. All "publisher" needs for me to switch completely is some debugging and a bit more development. Good work Affinity.

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I'm sorry you are disappointed. We're aware we have a great deal to do to address various constituencies. For this initial release we decided to coast on the export formats that Designer already had, especially PDF, and instead focus on other elements of DTP. This is because we felt that PDF was enough for at least some people to get some useful work done. Although the Affinity range is very successful, it doesn't make economic sense for us to keep developing Publisher in secret until it can be all things to all people. Instead we wanted to get it to the point where at least a few users would pay us for it, and then release it so they could do so. This means the first release probably won't satisfy three-quarters of the people who downloaded the beta. However, we do intend to continue developing it over the next many years. We are in it for the long haul - we developed the Plus range for over 25 years. Every new release will handle more use-cases, bring in another constituency of users and hopefully make us more money. It's going to be an exciting journey. Meanwhile I can only ask that you don't write us off altogether now, and instead check back in a year, or two years, or five years, and see whether we handle your requirements then.

PS. I probably should add that we really appreciate all the feedback we're getting, positive and negative. It's fantastic to see how much interest our new product has garnered. It's much better than being ignored!

I’m not disappointed! I am as happy as a clam, and honored to be able to “try out” the first run of what is going to be a fabulous product. If I could, I would purchase the beta right now and just wait for updates. Chins up, Affinities!!!!

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Quite right. We got our first mac back in 87 or 88. My father had bought it with Pagemaker and Aldus Freehand as DTP software. Coming from photo typesetting, it was revolutionary back in those days but I think if I were to go back to that equipment and software I'd slip into a major depression in no time. I've seen the evolution of hardware, monitors and software. After pagemaker, Xpress became the new standard (personally I was never a big fan), then came indesign and it became the new standard. I' ve tried some alternatives like the new Xpress and even the open source Scribus but I still think Indesign is the best DTP software.

however: I think Affinity is seriously on the right track towards becoming the new standard, not only because of its affordability but because it seems they understand the needs of creative professionals these days. All "publisher" needs for me to switch completely is some debugging and a bit more development. Good work Affinity.

@Franky Drappier, just to let you know: You've described my own story... ( One difference is, that I worked with Illustrator 1.1 instead of FreeHand. )

But everything else is exactly what I've seen over the years, the evolution of hardware and software!!!

I'm so happy with Affinity's software... That I'm completely free of Adobe's software!!!

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@Franky Drappier, just to let you know: You've described my own story... ( One difference is, that I worked with Illustrator 1.1 instead of FreeHand. )

But everything else is exactly what I've seen over the years, the evolution of hardware and software!!!

I'm so happy with Affinity's software... That I'm completely free of Adobe's software!!!

Thanks Affinity, keep up the good work!!!

There are probably more 'old timers' out there with similar stories. I was 16 in 87. Sometimes I wonder how we got to amazing designs, with only a couple of MB's of Ram and a 20 MB drive. Quite a contrast with those amazing monitors and powerful machines with nearly limitless possibilities we have these days.